Links I Like





pitas
A Fan's View
Anime News Network
The Queen of Swords
Silvestris.net
Jareth.com
Studio Kyrn
8-Bit Theatre
Silence the Comic

Tuesday, April 5, 2005
I used to be a big fan of choose-your-own adventure books as a kid (although that whole "dying in 90 percent of the endings" thing did tend to get kind of depressing after awhile.) Here's something that is NOT depressing, though: Something Awful's "Choose Your Own Adventure" Books That Never Quite Made It.

Sunday, April 3, 2005
Ugh. Daylight Savings Time is upon us. Not saying its a bad idea, since it does give people with something resembling a normal work schedule a few more hours of daylight to play with, but for a work-at-home artist like myself with no sense of structure or discipline, it can be something of a nuisance. (So much for my training myself to go to bed at a healthy hour when even the CLOCKS and State and Federal Law are against me. Oh well. I'll endure. I guess.)

I haven't managed to finish any new tarot cards as most of my time has been taken up with my costume business. (And any free time I've had recently has been sucked into the vortex known as the Broken Saints Flash Series Now normally, I tend to avoid Flash cartoons like the plague, seeing as how 90 percent of them seem to consist of: (a) uninspired sprite comics (b)stick figures beating the bloody piss out of each other (c) home movies featuring some fat kid embarrasing himself and his future offspring down to the seventh generation, or (d) some crudely animated screenshots of '80's era cartoon characters screaming badly dubbed profanities at each other. Occasionally though, you'll find something worth watching, and Broken Saints definitely fits into that category. (I should clarify that it's not really a Flash movie as much as it is an animated graphic novel. Most of the movement consists of panning across scenes, the fading in and out of images and text crawls.) This series features a well-written story, some beautiful anime-inspired artwork, a moody, stylish soundtrack and more disturbing apocalyptic imagery than a month-long Evangelion marathon. (Yes folks, this series is all about the end of the world. As such, it's chock full of controversial religious and political musing - and a generous helping of violence and nudity to boot- so it's not something I'd recommend for everyone.) One other caveat: The first few episodes have something of an experimental feel to them. Because of this - and because of the creator's tendency to wax philosophic every 10 seconds or so - the beginning of the story seems verrrry slow, almost plodding. The story tempo picks up in later episodes, and by the end the action is well-paced and intense, --but it takes a while to get there, so patience is reccommended. Oh, and the episodes of the Classic Flash version can be up to 20 minutes long so if you want to see it and you're stuck with dial-up or slow DSL, patience is ALSO recommended. (Or you can just buy the enhanced DVD version from the creator's website, if you have the money. Which I don't. Not after spending all my money to pick up the first few volumes of the Twelve Kingdoms anime, which Best Buy, in their infinite wisdom, have refused to stock - opting instead to stock 5 copies each of volumes 8 and 9. I'm not sure how this helps to promote the series or to gain more first-time viewers for it, but then again, I'm not the CEO of a major electronics company. What would I know?...Sigh.)

It's 4:17 now, according to the new, voodoo time our nation is currently going by. I suppose I ought to get to bed, no?